Louis-Dominique Cartouche

"So it was that my apprenticeship began wherein I stole and sweated and committed crimes, no longer for myself and my recognition, but rather for an odd pack of scabrous folk: the Assassins. Of whom, Mireille was the leader. And, reader, my labors there must live and die forever in silence."

―The final words recorded in Cartouche's memoirs.

Louis-Dominique Garthausen (born 1693), better known as Cartouche, was a legendary French highwayman, gang leader and womanizer, known to steal from the rich and give to the poor. He later joined the French Brotherhood of Assassins.

Biography

Born into poverty, Cartouche lived a self-described life of "debauchery, depredation and crime". As a youth, he quickly turned to theft as a means of survival. When he was fifteen, he broke into a wealthy mansion and encountered an older noblewoman, who took a fancy to him; she became Cartouche's lover for a time and taught him how to charm and to please.

Later on, Cartouche began targeting the rich to share their wealth amongst the impoverished, gaining him friends and allies. However, in 1721, he was eventually captured by the authorities and condemned to be broken on the wheel. Mireille, Cartouche's lover at the time and the leader of the French Brotherhood, intervened, managing to bribe the executioner into faking the execution. Cartouche subsequently joined the Brotherhood and recorded his story in a diary, which he passed on to a younger Assassin prior to his death.

Legacy

"I have carried on the work of my forebears – filching from the wealthy to feed the impoverished. And I have plied my trade well. Yet here I find myself an old man, stretched thin and slowed by time, eager to find another to carry on my work, and bear the name Cartouche into a new century."

―Cartouche III explaining his desire to find a successor.

The recipient of the memoirs became the new incarnation of the bandit Cartouche, allowing his legend to live on. By the time of the French Revolution, the third incarnation of Cartouche had become an old Assassin that had lost the diary to the Templars. Through chance, he encountered Arno Dorian and requested his help in getting the memoirs back.

Though skeptical of Cartouche's claims, the young Assassin agreed to the task and, upon completing it, earned the old man's approval. Cartouche then revealed that he was looking for someone to succeed him and informed Arno that he could potentially be that person.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Unity (mentioned only)